The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of an automatic firing weapon having at least two cartridge magazines from which there can be conveyed loose cartridges into a common discharge or outfeed channel, and a device for switching the cartridge infeed from one cartridge magazine to the other.
With a weapon as is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,043,198 a number of cartridge magazines or compartments are arranged in parallelism next to one another and in which there are stacked loose cartridges. Initially the cartridges are conveyed out of the compartment which is furthest from the center of the weapon. After emptying this compartment there is automatically opened the neighboring compartment situated closer to the center of the weapon. A drawback of this weapon is that it is not possible at any time to select the emptying of a given compartment, as such is required if there should be fired different types of ammunition in accordance with the relevant battle conditions.
Further, there is known a firing weapon from German Patent publication No. 471,398 in which two cartridge magazines or compartments can be inserted into two magazine chambers. In order to switch the infeed or delivery of cartridges from the first cartridge magazine to the second magazine, it is necessary that either the first cartridge magazine is empty or that it is ejected without being emptied, i.e. that the relevant magazine chamber is empty. If it is desired to then change-over from the second magazine to the first, then first of all the first cartridge magazine must be again inserted and the second either must be empty or ejected. A rapid change-over of the cartridge infeed from one magazine to the other and back again is therefore not possible.